The United States harbors a great diversity of landscapes, from polar ice to semi-tropical jungles, from wind-blown prairies to temperate rainforests, from alpine peaks to deserts and coral reefs. Its habitats include some of the most fertile on Earth, such as the Mississippi River bottomlands, as well as some of the most sterile—the western salt flats. Magnificent and diverse wildlife still flourish in many parts of this country, including bald eagle, moose, musk ox, caribou, elk, wolverine, bison, grizzly bear, mountain lion, polar bear, and wolf. Thousands of species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds also live here.

The United States has a rich history of conservation innovation. In 1872, the very concept of national parks was established in the U.S. with the creation of Yellowstone, the crown jewel of parks. This was followed in 1932 by the first International Peace Park, Glacier-Waterton National Park along the border with Canada. Though the country's wild places are protected through a vast system of public lands—ranging from national parks and wilderness areas to fish and wildlife refuges and state lands—some management activities on the public lands present major conservation challenges. Often, more productive private lands are an important part of long-term conservation success.

Fast Facts

Throughout the 20th century, WCS has helped create more than 30 U.S. parks and reserves, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Olympic and Wind Cave national parks. In 2008, our work in Wyoming led to the first federally-protected migration corridor, known as “the Path of the Pronghorn.”

The headwaters of the Missouri, the Columbia, and the Colorado Rivers all begin in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the only areas in the U.S. where the full set of large native carnivores still roam freely. WCS’s Yellowstone Rockies program is committed to ensuring the future of these carnivores.

The largest intact temperate forest in the world is in the Adirondack State Park. WCS is working to preserve the integrity of this forest despite growing threats of development and pollution.

Originally founded in 1905 by pioneering conservationists Theodore Roosevelt and William Hornaday, the American Bison Society helped save the bison from extinction. One hundred years later, the American Bison Society was re-launched by WCS to secure the species' ecological future.

At 23 million acres, Alaska's Teshekpuk Lake region is the largest single piece of public land in the U.S. WCS works to protect this key nesting site for migratory birds and other wildlife in the Arctic.

Challenges

National parks, refuges, and wilderness areas are often too small to protect biodiversity, given the immense challenges of today. The expanding human footprint is shrinking available habitat and limits prospects for wide-roaming species like grizzly bears, wolverines, and pronghorn. Valuable habitat outside protected areas is being rapidly degraded and destroyed, overtaken by second homes and tourism infrastructure, and a growing human population. Simultaneously, intensified mining and hydrocarbon development are invading previously untouched wild areas. Accordingly, many natural areas are becoming isolated by adjacent human development; land-use decisions are being made on a piecemeal basis; and policy affecting wildlife and wild places is not keeping pace with the magnitude of change.

Climate change exacerbates these challenges. As temperatures and climate variability increase, wildlife ranges are shifting. As a result, protected lands and protected species may cease to overlap, requiring an urgent need to identify and protect new areas that can act as refuges and wildlife corridors. There will be a need for new public policy that can dynamically shift how lands are categorized. And there will be hard work to do in engaging local communities as allies.

WCS Responds

Since its creation in 1895, the Wildlife Conservation Society has played a central role in protecting American wildlife and wild places. At the turn of the 20th century, WCS saved the American bison from extinction by successfully restocking reserves across the West. WCS supported the Murie expedition in Alaska in the 1950s, which led to the protection of the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Throughout this past century, WCS has supported pioneering field studies of key species such as bighorn sheep, black-footed ferrets, grizzly bears, mountain lions, and bald eagles, and helped create more than 30 U.S. parks and reserves.

WCS provides technical assistance and biological expertise to local groups and agencies that lack the resources to tackle conservation dilemmas. WCS supports comprehensive field studies to gather information on wildlife needs, and works with local communities, conservation groups, regulatory agencies, and industries to create public backing for conservation. Parallel with its efforts around the world, WCS works with Native Americans in the United States to increase their capacity to conserve and manage biodiversity on native lands.

WCS is committed to conserving vulnerable species such as wolverines, musk oxen, and bison and three large ecologically intact landscapes: Adirondack Park, the Yellowstone Rockies, and Arctic Alaska. We extend our reach beyond these landscapes by addressing five conservation challenges—climate change, wildlife corridors, natural resource extraction, wildlife health, and rural sprawl.

WCS Projects

Once plagued by pollution and neglect, today the Bronx River is home to herring, egrets, and even a lone beaver. The return of native wildlife is proof of the waterway’s improving health, and a testimony to community restoration efforts by WCS and other local groups.

Food, water, shelter, and the freedom to roam—these are the basic needs of wildlife. WCS-North America works to protect and interlink crucial wildlife habitats through field-based research, outreach, and policy.

The Arctic coastal plain of Alaska serves as the spring nesting ground for millions of shorebirds, waterfowl, loons, and other types of birds. Climate change is interfering with their migration, nesting, and feeding patterns. WCS-North America conservationists study how the birds cope with the changing landscape, and identify key areas for conservation.

WCS’s long history in northern California began with a walk through the redwoods in 1917 by Henry Fairfield Osborn, one of our founders. Almost a century later, WCS conservationist J. Michael Fay undertook his own hike through the woods to continue a legacy of forest conservation.

From the Newsroom

This Thanksgiving marked the 100-year-anniversary of one of the greatest milestones in the modern conservation movement: the transfer of 14 bison from the Bronx Zoo to Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota.

This video by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks highlights a new tool developed by WCS Associate Conservation Scientist Sarah Reed. The tool is being used by scientists and land managers to model how noise travels through landscapes and affects species and ecosystems— a major factor in decisions such as where to locate new roads or recreational trails.

Black bears are making a comeback in Nevada. WCS’s Jon Beckmann, conservation Scientist for the North America Program, urges that hunters and ranchers, the agricultural community, and environmentalists must determine together how we manage and live with these and other recovering populations of large carnivores.

Every year, millions of birds migrate to the coastal wetlands of Arctic Alaska to breed. Joe Liebezeit, WCS’s Arctic birds project leader, explains how rising temperatures are dramatically transforming this landscape and the lives of its seasonal residents.

Wolverines are known for their ferocity: these powerful carnivores are able to kill prey many times their size and are built to live in inhospitable environments. Despite these advantages, wolverine numbers steadily declined throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Determined to conserve these land-dwelling weasels, WCS established long-term research and conservation programs in Canada and the U.S. See how we study these reclusive animals in the following episode of This American Land, a weekly news program that focuses on issues impacting our country's landscapes, waters and wildlife.

Size often matters in the animal kingdom, with larger animals faring better than their compact counterparts. But a recent WCS study suggests that for a juvenile moose, mother’s presence—not body mass—is key to survival.

Mayor Bloomberg and WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper announced new funding and designs for the New York Aquarium’s “Ocean Wonders: Sharks!” exhibit. The 57,000-square-foot building slated to open in 2015 will house 115 species of marine animals, including 25 shark species, along with 500,000 gallons of water.

In his first blog celebrating bison, WCS Executive Vice President for Public Affairs John Calvelli discusses ongoing efforts to protect this iconic species. WCS has been protecting buffalo since the turn of the 20th century and is currently working with conservationists, sportsmen, Native American tribes, and lawmakers to advance the National Bison Legacy Act.

WCS has been leading bison conservation efforts since 1905, when William Hornaday co-founded the American Bison Society with Theodore Roosevelt. In addition to supporting bison and the landscapes they roam, WCS has joined efforts to craft the National Bison Legacy Act--Congressional legislation that would designate bison as our country's national mammal.

Fishers hunt rodents and are the only predators tenacious enough to regularly prey upon porcupines. Unfortunately, these hardy carnivores are now threatened by toxic rodenticides used by illegal growers of marijuana.

Mountain lion is one of many species inhabiting the southern border of the United States. In an article for UT-San Diego, WCS conservationist Jon Beckmann discusses the importance of maintaining opportunities for animals to cross between borders.

As their sea ice habitat diminishes in the Arctic, Pacific walruses increasingly use coastal lands to haul out, and feed in the surrounding shallow waters. Because this phenomenon poses new threats to walrus populations, conservationists are adopting new strategies to monitor and protect them.

WCS Ecologist Jerry Jenkins, who has spent more than four decades studying the environment of the Adirondacks, documents the impacts of climate change on the region’s wildlife, habitats, and communities.

As pronghorn set out on their long fall journey, new protections are underway to help them reach their destination. WCS conservationists Renee Seidler and Jon Beckmann describe the impressive migration, its formidable obstructions, and a few new ways around them.

Arctic Alaska, famous for playing host to tens of thousands of migratory birds that come from around the world to breed and nest each summer, has also become a playground for predator species like Arctic foxes, ravens, gulls, and owls. WCS conservation biologist Joe Liebezeit researches and photographs the effects of a changing landscape on area wildlife.

Why are North America’s smallest turtles getting sick? By giving full health check-ups to the rare reptiles, WCS and partners aim to clear the fog hanging over bog turtles. It's a much-needed rescue mission for a species now considered endangered in New York and Massachusetts.

A
four-year WCS study finds the Teshekpuk Lake region within the National
Petroleum Reserve to hold the highest breeding bird density in Arctic
Alaska—one solid reason for its permanent protection from energy development.

At a recent symposium held at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s National
Conservation Training Center facility in Shepherdstown, West Virginia,
Dr. George Schaller called for increased protection of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.

WCS researchers working on a New York Seascape study discover a female sand tiger shark, missing all its fins, swimming through Delaware Bay. The conservationists call the discovery a disturbing reminder about the ongoing threats to vulnerable shark populations around the world.

Despite its low profile, the musk ox has persisted through the Pleistocene exinctions, outlasting the woolly mammoth and other prehistoric mammals. WCS Senior Scientist Joel Berger studies America’s least known large mammal and its unusual survival tactics.

Come
2015, Coney Island beachgoers will come ashore to connect with sharks, skates,
rays and other fish. The New York Aquarium’s newest exhibit will bring people
to the sea, and the sea life to the people.

The new book Safe Passages:
Highways, Wildlife and Habitat Connectivity, edited by WCS-North America Program conservationists Jon Beckmann and Jodi Hilty, provides a roadmap for making wildlife-friendly thoroughfares to connect islands of habitat.

WCS is extremely encouraged by the Department of Interior’s decision to protect 170,000 acres south and northeast of Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve from leasing. The area provides critical habitat for breeding birds and caribou populations.

This week, WCS scientists are trekking across the vast and remote Alaskan Arctic and deep into the National Petroleum Reserve to explore how best to conserve Arctic wildlife
in the midst of expanding energy development. WCS conservationist Steve Zack is chronicling the trip for the New York Times' Scientists at Work blog.

A WCS-led study says some nesting bird species are declining near oil development in the Arctic. Infrastructure from oil drilling, coupled with edible garbage, creates “subsidized housing” for as opportunistic predators like foxes and gulls.

WCS scientists working in northern Alaska spot a shorebird originally tagged 8,000 miles away, in Victoria, Australia. The bar-tailed godwit flew the length of the Pacific in an epic journey that underscores the importance of this northern breeding ground.

A national survey says that the American public respect and love bison, but most are unaware that the animals are in trouble. The survey is part of an effort to spark public support for ecological restoration of the species.

The U.S. Forest Service designates the nation’s first wildlife migration corridor to protect the movement of North America’s fastest land animal, the pronghorn. These swift creatures number nearly half a million in Wyoming alone, but the proliferation of gas fields and housing development has sliced up much of their territory.

It will likely take a century, but conservationists believe they can restore the American bison to a surprising amount of its former range. Particularly important are the grassland ecosystems, both public and private, that might benefit from bison grazing, and local communities that might benefit from having herds flourish nearby.

A long-term study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the BioDiversity Research Institute, and other organizations has found and confirmed that environmental mercury—much of which comes from human-generated emissions—is impacting the health and reproductive success of common loons in the northeastern U.S.

What will it take to conserve the Path of the Pronghorn, a trail that our continent’s fastest land animal has used since the end of the last Ice Age? In a landscape as famous for its mountains as for its oil fields, WCS scientist Dr. Joel Berger is determined to find out.